Meghan O'Rourke
Meghan O'Rourke
Meghan O'Rourkeis an American nonfiction writer, poet and critic...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
CountryUnited States of America
Meghan O'Rourke quotes about
dog memories grief
Grief is a bad moon, a sleeper wave. It's like having an inner combatant, a saboteur who, at the slightest change in the sunlight, or at the first notes of a jingle for a dog food commercial, will flick the memory switch, bringing tears to your eyes.
falling-in-love stories love-story
All love stories are tales of beginnings. When we talk about falling in love, we go to the beginning, to pinpoint the moment of freefall.
ideas work-out trying
One of the ideas I've clung to most of my life is that if I just try hard enough it will work out.
profound dying difficult-experiences
After all dying is one of the most profound and difficult experiences we have.
loss faces different
Loss doesn't feel redeemable. But for me one consoling aspect is the recognition that, in this at least, none of us is different from anyone else: We all lose loved ones; we all face our own death.
self talent conscious
My theory is this: Women falter when they're called on to be highly self-conscious about their talents. Not when they're called on to enact them.
religious children two
I am the indoctrinated child of two lapsed Irish Catholics. Which is to say: I am not religious.
information perfectionist
I live to collect information, and I am also a perfectionist.
loss tiny enormous
Loss is so paradoxical: It is at once enormous and tiny.
understanding culture taught
My whole life, I had been taught to read and study, to seek understanding in knowledge of history, of cultures.
loss past self
There are many kinds of loss embedded in a loss - the loss of the person, and the loss of the self you got to be with that person. And the seeming loss of the past, which now feels forever out of reach.
relationship letting-go loss
Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.
desire one-day stories
Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.
want sometimes what-you-want
Sometimes you don't even know what you want until you find out you can't have it.